


About Face

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Face swap, Gen, Literal interpretation of Minecraft skins, Spookification Chamber, actually one person has no face at all for most of the fic, button eyes, mild body horror, no mouth for u
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27368443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Mumbo's Spookification Chamber gives Grian and Bdubs a bit more spook than they asked for.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 93





	About Face

One moment, Bdubs was decorating a house at his base.

The next moment, he couldn’t see.

On instinct, he stopped moving, taking a moment for his mind to catch up with what was happening. For a moment he thought he might have been hit with a Blindness effect, but that didn't make sense - nothing could actually  _ do _ that. Especially not this total, complete nothingness.

He felt his way over to a chair and pulled out his communicator. Of course, he couldn't see the chat. Bdubs held down a button on the side. 

“Turn on voice mode,” he tried to say - but no sound came from him. It felt like he hadn’t even moved his mouth. His mouth-

Something was more wrong than he thought. Bdubs brought his hand to his face, and immediately recoiled away. He quickly brushed his hand across the space again, then leaned back, horrified, barely able to process what had happened.

His face was... gone.

This was- this was bad. This was SO bad. So wrong. Bdubs reopened his communicator, hands almost shaking too much to use it. He knew the feel of the device well enough to get to what he hoped was the right place on the keyboard. Frantically, he did his best to type a series of messages: “help”, “can’t see”, “can’t talk”, “something wrong with my face”, “at my base”, “please”.

There were a few buzzes in response as confusion and concern abounded in the chat. Bdubs put the communicator aside on the table, not wanting to know about messages he couldn’t respond to. Someone would be coming to help. He would just stay put. As if he had a choice.

After who knew how long spent sitting and fretting, Bdubs heard the distinctive sound of firework rockets outside. He shot up, almost falling as his foot tangled in the chair. He made his way over to the wall and started pounding on it with the handle of his axe, letting the visitor know which house he was in. Moments later, he heard the door being chopped down and put away. He turned toward the doorway.

“Bdubs?- Oh. Ohhh no. Oh I think I see.” It was unmistakably Grian, though his voice sounded odd, as though it hadn’t been used in a while. And did he have a bit of a lisp? Odd. “Okay. Just... just stay calm. I think I know how we might fix this. But it’ll involve going on a bit of a journey. Alright?”

Bdubs nodded. Grian guided Bdubs’ hand to his arm and carefully led him out of the house and across the field. As they walked, Bdubs listened to Grian chatter, mostly comments and warnings about what was up ahead, but also compliments on Bdubs’s landscaping and building, and ramblings about some of the things Grian had been up to.

“Nether portal,” Grian warned, steadying Bdubs as he stepped in.

“And we’re out.” Grian gently pulled Bdubs into the heat of the Nether. Bdubs vaguely knew where he was. He had tunneled into the netherrack near the bedrock ceiling to make this portal, so at least they weren’t out in the open. Bdubs let himself be led down hallway after hallway, footsteps echoing on a jumbled mess of netherrack, cobblestone, and other assorted materials. Most of these tunnels weren’t used much anymore, but Bdubs liked his Nether trips as safe as possible.

The ground changed from soft netherrack to hard basalt. Grian hastily pulled Bdubs back just as his foot hit a patch of open air. Grian seemed to be taking him to the shopping district?

Grian guided Bdubs’ hands onto a heavy, ropey vine. “Going down. You want me below or above?”

Bdubs pointed downward.

“So I can break your fall?”

Bdubs nodded enthusiastically. Grian laughed. He climbed onto the vine, and both slid tentatively down into the hub.

Grian led Bdubs through the big portal. The unsettling, swirling nausea of the dimensional transport was worse when he couldn’t fix his eyes on a point outside the portal. He wondered what would happen if he needed to throw up. He hoped he wouldn’t find out.

They rested for a few moments, outside the portal. The trek had been harrowing for both of them. Then Grian pressed on, taking Bdubs on road after road until they tripped over a step and entered a building.

They turned right. Grian rested Bdubs’ hand on something, and he felt the familiar spark of admin magic connecting him to a bed-spawn. Grian started helping Bdubs take his armor off. This didn’t bode well.

“Okay, so stand right here...” Grian scooted Bdubs into place. “This is the place that I think caused this in the first place. It’s the only thing I could think of that could maybe do something that fixes it?”

Bdubs shrugged.  _ Worth a try. _ He wrapped his arms nervously around himself, though.

“Sorry about this,” Grian said. He opened a chest.

The floor dropped out from under Bdubs. He landed painfully on a stone floor. Rockets. Rockets? Why were there rockets? This was so loud! And they were hurting him! They-

Bdubs shot up in the bed, ears still ringing from the firework that had killed him. He looked around. He could see! He could see he was in a little stone room, and there was a wall of chests, and there was Grian wearing his face-

Wait-

Grian turned to fully face him. Bdubs screamed and scrambled back, immediately realized he  _ could _ scream, and put his hand to where his mouth should be, only to find that there was still  _ nothing there. _ Heart and mind racing, Bdubs eyed Grian. If Grian had his face... Bdubs raised his hand toward his eyes. His fingers met the hard edge of what he realized was a black button. He didn’t have his own face back, but it was a familiar one-

“Oh, hey,” Grian laughed. “Now you have  _ my _ face!”

Bdubs shuddered. It was better than being blind and mute, at least. “How? Why???”

Grian gestured around them. “We’re in Mumbo’s Spookification Chamber! It kills you and you respawn all spoOooOoky.” He wiggled his fingers at Bdubs. “Whatever that happens to mean for each of us. For me, that apparently meant stealing your face. Sorry. And then since you went in next, you ended up with my face in return!”

This was getting to be too much. “H-how do we get back to normal?” Bdubs wondered, weirded out by his new “ability” to talk without a mouth.

Grian shrugged casually. Too casually, in Bdubs’ humble opinion. “Dunno. Mumbo’ll probably invent a de-spookifier or something at some point, but right now he says it’s irreversible.”

Bdubs tried to grimace at him, with predictably little effect. “And of course you’re  _ fine _ with this, aren’t you?”

“I do feel kinda bad,” Grian admitted. “I had no idea the thing would go so far as to steal someone’s face completely. But y’know, it’s kinda nice having a proper mouth and eyes. I could get used to this.”

Grian opened his elytra. Bdubs lunged for him. “Oh, no you don’t-” But Grian had already zoomed off, laughing.

Bdubs sat back down on the bed with a huff. His hand explored the doll-like face again. Oh, sure, Grian could get used to  _ his _ face just fine -  _ his  _ face was normal. Bdubs wasn’t sure he could ever get used to having a face like Grian’s. He just hoped Mumbo came up with a way to reverse this sooner rather than later.

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing the trend of "my chapters of YWTP are being posted really far apart so I'm writing other stuff in between", here's something I wrote in like a day based on some recent spookification chamber misadventures!


End file.
